About the time of his marriage Mr. Longfellow's eyes failed him on account of overstraining them, and one of Mrs. Longfellow's first wifely duties was to furnish eyes for her husband. She read to him and wrote for him a great deal for several years, and the close companionship which this required was very pleasant to both. He was a very busy man in those days; for, contrary to the popular impression, Mr. Longfellow did a great deal of hard work at the college for a good many years. His was no honorary position, but a genuine working professorship, involving the preparation of a great number of lectures during each year and close class-work besides. He enjoyed this work very much for the first few years, but long before he resigned his position it became exceedingly burdensome to him. The college should have relieved him of the drudgery of his professorship, and allowed him time for the preparation of special lectures upon really scholarly themes; but it had not the wisdom to do so, and exacted the labors of a dray-horse from this chained Pegasus. In the journal are many entries like the following:-- "I seriously think of resigning my professorship. My time is so fully taken up by its lectures and other duties that I have none left for writing. Then my eyes are suffering, and the years are precious; and if I wish to do anything in literature it must be done now. Few men have written good poetry after fifty." Again:-- "I get very tired of the routine of this life. The bright autumn weather draws me away from study, and the brown branches of the leafless trees are more beautiful than books. We lead but one life here on earth. We must make that beautiful. And to do this, health and elasticity of mind are needful, and whatever endangers or impedes these must be avoided." And again:-- "The day of rest--the 'truce of God' between contending cares--is over, and the world begins again to swing round with clash and clang, like the wings of a windmill. Grind, grind, grind." Some hint of real work may be found in this:-- "The seventy lectures to which I am doomed next year hang over me like a dark curtain. Seventy lectures! who will have the patience to hear them? If my eyes were strong I should delight in it. But it will eat up a whole year, and I was just beginning so cheerily on my poem and looking forward to pleasant work on it next year." Oh, the pity of it! Many men could have lectured to college boys on the modern languages and literature, if not as well as Longfellow, at least well enough; but who was there who could write his poems? That he should drudge on through his best years, giving only the odds and ends of his time to his real life-work, seems an infinite pity. What might he not have done in those earlier years could he have gone fresh and untired to his musings and his dreams?